HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

The reason for the doubt is that it wasn't transparent nor obvious. The Chinese government retroactively censored the institute's publications, Fall 2019 job postings, staff listings, and internal discussion of new symptoms amongst certain researchers [1]. There is a possibility that there were a few earlier cases than the market ones which were covered up to conceal negligence at the institute.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

⬐ layer8

It’s perfectly possible that the Chinese government isn’t entirely sure about the origin either, and is censoring just in case.

⬐ mikeyouse

It's just so silly -- we can do genomic analysis to figure out the lineage of every confirmed sample. "There's the possibility" is weasel wording that obscures the fact that there's literally no evidence for earlier cases.

⬐ Innominate

The lack of evidence is from people and information being disappeared by a totalitarian regime. That itself is evidence.

Here's a two of his videos where he claims that COVID-19 emerged from a lab:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-GVcfP1zrg

And here's a pretty thorough analysis of the flaws with this theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk

⬐ philliphaydon

I'm unsure how he claims to have found the source. The theory begain at the beginning of Jan 2020 but he posted in April 2020.

Just watching the 'thorough' analysis video, he talks about some person who posted a paper about the source, and in the screenshot it shows Feb 2020. And says the source of the paper was from laowhy86's video, which is published April 2020.

I stopped watching there because it already makes no sense.

⬐ wh313

I believe you misunderstood his analysis.

At timestamp 6:36 of his video [1], laowhy86 analyzes a copy of the draft "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus" to conclude that the virus must have come from the lab. This preprint has been shown to be false by future scholarship (see the citations of the draft at [2] for some examples).

Potholer then analyzes the veracity of the claims within that preprint in his video [3], starting with an excerpt of [1] starting at 2:02.

So the timeline should be:

Feb. 2020 - Preprint published

->

Apr. 2020 - laowhy's video

->

May 2020 - potholer's rebuttal

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

[2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1699435143784344899...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk

> While you're pondering all that keep in mind that the person who "broke" the story in the WSJ about the sick workers at the Wuhan lab was Michael R. Gordon. He's also notable for having co-authored with Judith Miller in 2002 the NYT story on Hussein's nuclear program and WMDs that arguably helped propel us into the Iraq War.

Uh, are you referring to this [0]? It's the only obvious thing I can find on Google linked to his name.

It was also posted over a year after when we first heard of those sick workers. Here's [1] one example (they're mentioned from 6:30 to 6:50).

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-w...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

> Looking back in hindsight, I wonder how we could have picked out the lab leak theory as being worthy of consideration, given the context.

There were a lot of threads to pull, and some of us were following it. For example, this video was posted in April 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

> The only recent evidence it contains is the fact that 3 researchers from WIV sought hospital care back in autumn of 2019 with symptoms similar to COVID.

Even that is something people uncovered online and we were talking about a year ago.

Quick edit: Here's a video from April 2020 that touches on this at 6:38 (and a whole lot more otherwise): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

Exactly.

I am not into conspiracies, but I highly recommend this video from early 2020 which details how one of the Chinese researchers at WIV, Huang Yan Ling disappeared in late 2019 and how subsequently her internet presence was memory holed [1] by Chinese censors (all verifiable with the links in the video description and wayback).

https://youtu.be/bpQFCcSI0pU

This to me is one of the smoking guns.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole

If anyone is interested in the Job posting story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU&t=122s

Webarchive links are in the comments.

https://youtu.be/bpQFCcSI0pU?t=255

Early last year (2020), whole Chinese internet social media was looking for "黄燕玲" - a missing researcher in Wuhan lab. She disappeared around Oct/Nov 2019. Chinese social media suspected she was patient-0. The messages showed up multiple times in my wechat feeds for couple days. They all got taken down a few days later.

Government officials still claimed she was alive but was not able to produce any proof.

If WHO really want to investigate, they just need ask :

If "黄燕玲" worked for Wuhan lab? Where is she now? Where is her families, friends, co-workers? Can we talk to any of them?

Exactly. I remember seeing this video on youtube in April 2020 and being kind of confused about it's content:

youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

From what that guy is saying there, there were clear signs of a coverup at that institute very early in 2020.

Probably only one.

There is strong tertiary evidence that patient zero was a Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher named Huang YanLing 黃燕玲, this has all been scrubbed from public memory. The wayback archive links still hold up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU (links are at the bottom of the video description).

⬐ drran

When the epidemic was started, I started to spread information about new danger in my country, and I was attacked by our government then (including police and three letter agency), so I'm not surprised that the lead SARS researcher is missing in China, because she knows the danger of SARS-CoV very well. Our government did not understand the danger of SARS-CoV-2 until now, when clinics collapsed under load.

⬐ drran

Russia says no danger after blast in smallpox lab

A gas cylinder exploded and prompted a fire in a Siberian research facility which houses samples of smallpox, SARS, Ebola and other potentially deadly viruses. Russian officials said there was no threat of contamination.

https://www.dw.com/en/russia-says-no-danger-after-blast-in-s...

⬐ phyalow

Ah very interesting, I had no idea about that. Thanks for sharing.

⬐ drran

The first covid-like epidemic was in November 2019 in South part of the Russian Federation, where Vector lab is located: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMh11FtfaP0

Turn on subtitles, then select automatic translation -> English in options.

⬐ stjohnswarts

This seems rather unlikely based on how quickly covid spreads in countries that don't take many precautions or slow to quarantine (like the USA and Russia) . Only countries that lock down fast and decisively like China, Korea, and Taiwan kept it under semblence of control initially.

⬐ drran

Yep, covid spread quickly over Russian Federation, but it was unnoticed until first test systems arrived. Quote:

"The first practical use of the test system for the detection of antibodies to COVID-19, developed by the Novosibirsk State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology" Vector ", was held among the employees of the FSBI" National Medical and Surgical Center. N.I. Pirogov" Ministry of Health of Russia. Testing was carried out in 204 employees of the center, who had no symptoms of acute respiratory viral infections in the previous two months. According to the results of testing, antibodies to coronavirus were detected in 30 employees of the Center working in the" red "zone and at the entrance to it", - the message says.

https://news.rambler.ru/community/44036116-immunitet-k-koron...

I wish more people would watch this [0], might not be true but damn does it seem convincing. Seems pretty obvious that it was lab originated, even if it isn't manufactured.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

The sources listed in the description of this video seem somewhat reliable. While I'm not completely sold on the lab being the source I think the odds that it was are still pretty high for me.

⬐ cprayingmantis

User was created 37 days ago. This is their only post. Exercise caution when clicking.

The part about the undertaker seems made-up, but much of the rest is documented here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

(Sources used in the video are linked at the bottom of the description)

⬐ mirimir

That is indeed quite the story.

In case the YT link evaporates, I downloaded it.

Also see the author's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/laowhy86

No one is saying its a bioweapon, merely shoddy containment in a facility that did viral research, the research could have been entirely altruistic, its still their fault for letting it out of the lab and then hiding the fact, arresting doctors and journalists and letting it spread. When they could have been letting other countries take precautions to prepare for it and shut down travel out of the country sooner instead of telling the world there is no real danger, no human to human transmission, and everything is fine.

On the other hand, prefaced with the fact that it isn't one, or was still under research if that, bio-weapons are just as effective when they disrupt an economy and infrastructure and a virus targets the elders or those at an age of those most likely in leadership positions. So it doesn't have to kill military aged people to be effective. Again, this is likely not one, but the disruption its caused and economic hit its taken is in line with how modern wars are fought. They only need to overwhelm medical facilities, its like the case with mines, they don't kill so much as maim, because maiming soldiers puts a greater strain on an army to keep them alive, transport them and treat them (even though they'll never return to the battle field), then if they were simply dead. You kill a soldier, they're down a man, you maim/disable a soldier, they're down a man, two other soldiers needed to evacuate him, they're down transport needed to get them back to a medical center, and several medical personnel needed to treat them and get them stable. You want to cripple an army, you don't kill it, you make it so the soldiers barely survive and need assistance, or you take out their resources, this virus does a good job of both.

A virus only has to severely disable economies and create a strain on resources to be effective at crippling an opponent, if its not especially deadly, it can spread further, if it puts enough soldiers in hospital beds, especially senior leadership, its effective. Even if this isn't a bio-weapon, it actually would be pretty effective as one assuming you already had the vaccine, which no one does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

⬐ Medicalidiot

>Even if this isn't a bio-weapon, it actually would be pretty effective as one assuming you already had the vaccine, which no one does.

Not even close, not even a little close. With proper containment COVID-19 is easily contained. This isn't that great, especially when you look at countries who are handling this well: Taiwan. Bioweapons are notorious for being quick and lethal. As per the CDC on bioterrorism:

>When the potential agents are reviewed for these characteristics, anthrax and smallpox are the two with greatest potential for mass casualties and civil disruption

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/5/4/99-0411_article#r6

If you give me a normal amount of resources and competent public health professionals COVID-19 does not scare me. It's CFR is below 1% with adequate protocols (Standard, honestly).

China is so interconnected to the rest of the world, especially the US, the worst thing for them is to shut down both their and the US economy. Why would they test a weapon that disrupts the entire globe when you could have a weapon that has a narrow focus of a small region?

⬐ surge

It's easily contained by shutting down the economy and social distancing...

You didn't read a thing I said did you? You're calling whats happening now, easy? Did you even read what happened to the naval ship that got infected?

This has had pretty disastrous effects for the economy of the entire world, there are food riots overseas right now, the unemployment rate is skyrocketing. The social disorder alone, cops are arresting doctors providing supplies to the homeless, yelling at women not wearing a mask while walking their dog, arresting people playing in a park near no one else, by world leaders being put in the ICU. Get your head out of the sand.

None of this is easily contained. Ebola is easily contained, this you don't even know you're sick when you're walking around spreading it for days.

>If you give me a normal amount of resources and competent public health professionals COVID-19 does not scare me.

Weirdly, no countries seem to have this, since they're all getting ravaged, at least those with high population density. The only country's with high population density not getting ravaged is Taiwan, which has an extreme mistrust of the CCP, and speak/read Chinese so had intelligence from the Chinese Internet on what was really going on far before most country's public did. They reacted sooner by shutting down travel, and sounded the alarm bells, but the WHO didn't listen to them, because they were too busy pretending they weren't a country.

⬐ Medicalidiot

>You're calling whats happening now, easy?

I'm saying that the response to COVID-19 is easy. You know why? Because all it would have taken is surveillance and proper quarantine. I'm going to say it again: if you give me a normal amount of resources and a normal team I would be able to manage anyone with COVID with reasonable success. Now it starts getting tricky with any serious comorbidities and luckily we have nephrology to manage electrolytes. Shutting this thing down is not challenging. What's challenging is when you have incompetent leadership that ignores expert advice.

⬐ surge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Yet the competent leadership an expert advice doesn't seem to exist or be in place anywhere.

The experts are arguing we isolate, social distance, limit travel from hot zones, quarantine those that have recently traveled from hot zones, etc, that's whats being done. Theory and practice are two different things, if you have a theory about what would stop it and say its easy, yet its been very hard to implement those theories or get average intelligence individuals to participate, its in fact, not so simple and easy as you say.

The only place I've seen with high population density competently handle this is Taiwan. They were ahead of it, they mistrusted the initial information coming from "expert sources" and got ahead of it.

Her name was Huang Yan Ling (黄燕玲) for anyone who might be interested in learning more about the potential patient 0. The evidence is very compelling and this video does a good job at presenting it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

The most credible evidence has been gathered and presented in a youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU . The youtuber was a long time china immigrant before being forced to move abroad.

⬐ dirtyid

This entire video is translating open-source conspiracy theories that Chinese netizens conjured up under lockdown. You know what else was conjured up under lock down? US engineered weapon from Fort Detrick disguised as vape pneumonia that later infected Wuhan via international military games. Both theories has exactly the same credibility and validity.

It's ridiculous that people think laowhy and serpenza are credible China-watchers. They're travel bloggers and now clickbait video generators. The amount of people who get all their information and opinions on China from these two is worryingly staggering. There is an incredible amount of subject matter experts that specialize and operate in China. Literal billions are poured into NGOs, think tanks and other intelligence sources with boots on the ground. Granted much of it is not great, but they're infinitely more reliable than a couple youtubers who got kicked out of China and have no professional prospects outside of click bait conspiracy theory.

Also notice how he has recent videos about China killing his dreams, his move out of China and his wife divorcing him. Do you think that would cloud his judgement? Why isn't there a video on netizens work on the US engineered virus conspiracy theory? Youtubers =/= credible sources.

⬐ light_cone

You are saying that both theory have the same credibility. I don't agree, because you can actually go see the sources linked in the video description. So why don't you go see the sources? Is your claim that laowhy86 is divorced, and that his judgement is clouded, substantiated? I didn't think so, so to me it looks like plain old smear.

This lab accident, on the contrary, is NOT unsubstantiated claims, and acting as it is some frivolous theory is unfair at best. I, while perhaps inducing worryingly staggering feelings to you, looked at the sources and concluded that the info was credible. So it has nothing to with the occupation of laowhy86.

You are appealing to the authority of billions poured into NGO, as if corruption never happens, as if money magically makes people competent, as if organizations never suffered from political bloat. As if for example there was no video proof that the WHO was ignoring Taiwan input for policial reasons – a country that has better epidemics statistics than the majority of us–. Are we also all stupid to entertain the idea that, when a WHO leader does not hear the journalist on skype exactly when she asks a question about taiwan, this is just a bad stratagem to elude the question?

Please.

⬐ dirtyid

The Wuhan lab leak theory has as much credible endorsement as Fort Detrik - i.e. none. Both are replete with connect the dot sources conjured by Chinese /r/conspiracy equivalents, the latter complete with corresponding proof drawn from US media sources. And if you believe CIA's recent allegations evidence of virus in Wuhan dating back to November... then the timeline actually syncs up with the US military games theory. Both are credible depending on what one choose to belief. It's just that neither is believed by most experts, but they however endorsed through political posturing and perpetuated by "useful idiots".

laowhy86, bitter expats doing China-bad for clicks is well trodden career pivot. You can see clearly in his youtube timeline when he transitioned from prosaic China musings to anti-CPC bashing after he left the country. His authority or lack of absolutely has to do with the fact that he's a youtube travel blogger and not subject matter expert - again of which there are many - who has not endorsed such theories. I'm not appealing to a singular authority, but a community of China watchers where conspiracy theories are dismissed as conspiracy theories. Unless your conspiracy is that they all got bought off - including anti-China institutions - and are collectively incompetent. Or alternatively, a youtuber is endorsing conspiracy for clicks. Which is more likely? Which is the kind of thing a stupid person would entertain?

Re: Taiwan, they released the alleged emails that they had information on H2H on Dec31st. Never mind there's no way they would be able to verify such information since they only had their first imported case on Jan21st. There's Taiwanese interviews in early Jan where their own CDC deputy director stated it was impossible to verify H2H until new cases happen after Jan14th. Their Dec31st email turned out to be the exact correspondence provided by Wuhan medical officials to the WHO and other medical community prior - they are treating novel corona patients in isolation wards which is standard practice. AKA it was nothing. Also elevating Taiwan was part of a coordinated US propaganda push to undermine the WHO including that interview (by HK news no less) that attempts to discredit the WHO via ambush questions that's outside of the organization's let alone a scientist's purview. Identifying propaganda and manufactured consent is media literacy 101. Believing your countries propaganda over a competing narrative is understandable, but believing a youtuber over general consensus of experts is less so. That's Alex Jones territory.

⬐ coupdejarnac

Regarding laowhy86 and serpentza, you're being disingenuous at best. Everything you say about them is false. Their channels are not about view whoring conspiracy theories. It's pretty obvious why they've been negative recently: they are no longer living in China, because they were being harassed by police. When they lived in China, they had to watch everything they said, so they kept the message upbeat. I don't think they claim to be experts about infectious disease, nor do they claim with certainty that this is cause of the outbreak.

Have you spent much time in China? Have you lived there, or is your knowledge all second hand?

⬐ dirtyid

I said this specific video is peddling conspiracy theory, otherwise they're nothing more than ex-travel bloggers who has recently pivoted to click-bait China bashing after they were pressured out of the country. Yes I was an expat in China in the mid 90s to mid 00s and still have ongoing dealings there.

The point is they are not only not experts in infectious disease, they're not experts in any particular Chinese subjects at all. Living in China is not itself a remarkable qualification. If I were to ask people to find me two youtubers from China who moved to US to do travel blogs that I should base most of my opinions about China on, it would be an impossibly asinine exercise because US is a large, complex country. So is China. That's why you have thousands of institutions and entire industries of specific experts trying to grasp the larger realities. This industry exists for Chinese affairs, yet a surprising amount of people insist on posting generalized, personal reflections of a couple youtubers instead of relevant subject matters for each respective topics which, again exists.

⬐ throwaway50987

It’s unfortunate your comments are being downvoted for stating the truth.

⬐ None

None

A lot of their information was scrubbed, but user laowhy86 on Youtube found their identity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

He believes this scientist was the first person infected, who it spread from.

> I don't buy the escaped/released from a lab theories espoused here and on Facebook and the like. Apparently the mutations within the SARS-COV-2 found in humans compared to the bat virus are purely random and hence the thing is not or very unlikely genetically engineered.

Only the conspiracy theorists claim it was an "engineered bio-weapon". The most likely explanation is that it just escaped involuntarily from the lab. Why from the lab, and not the wet market?

- that lab was specifically researching coronavirii in bats

- there are reports researchers there got splashed with blood and fecies of bats [0]

- the researcher in question (Huang Yan Lin), the likely patient zero, disappeared without a trace, both physically and online [0]

- the horseshoe bats that most likely hosted the virus weren't even sold on the wuhan wet market, according to several eye witnesses

- there are no known horseshoe bat colonies in a 900km diameter around wuhan

- the lab is just 280 meters away from the wet market, so the market was a very convenient scape goat

And why was COVID-19 not engineered? Simple, it is not necessary to explain the pandemic potential. All of this is not new and there were warnings about exactly this happening:

- it was long known that horseshoe bats were a dangerous reservoir of SARS-CoV like virii [1]

- there were US simulations held on how to respond to a respiratory virus with chinese origin in 2019 [2]

- there were WHO warnings on how respiratory RNA virii are prime candidates for the next pandemic [3]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU (starts at ~3:00) [1] https://twitter.com/_benoux_/status/1245381552672059392?s=20 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Contagion [3] https://twitter.com/bmiloy/status/1238541860542377984/photo/...

⬐ jhanschoo

- the horseshoe bats that most likely hosted the virus weren't even sold on the wuhan wet market, according to several eye witnesses

- there are no known horseshoe bat colonies in a 900km diameter around wuhan

If you have sources for these, you will have convinced me that it's more likely that it originated from the lab than the market.

⬐ MrBuddyCasino

Its from a preprint by two Chinese researchers, that has since been deleted from researchgate, which is why I couldn't find it initially:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https:/www.resear...

Climate change is not new, just three hundreds years ago there was little ice age.

Global travel is new.

As for source of the virus: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU

I think this video got posted yesterday, but at first glance, it didn't seem all that unreasonable to think the institute somehow originated it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU